The End of the World at Hand

Otago Witness, Issue 1797, 30 April 1886, Page 27

The End of the World at Hand

The few surviving- sons of the prophets that still preserve the dignity of the mantie. art, in spite of all the obstacles presented by an age of scepticism, have with unfailing goodwill once more published the results of their inquiries into the future, or that parl of it which is represented by the new year. As is usual, the prognostications are couched in terms of becoming vagueness, and, so far as definite statements goes, nothing very remarkable in the way of either weal or woe is to be anticipated.

It is then strictly in accordance with professional etiquette that the modern school has favoured the world with no very extraordinary predictions for the year J 880, and its events* might be left to take their duo course without any anticipations of jo.>ri and sorrows were it not for one darkly boding utterance committed to writing by an ancient seer three centuries ago. The seer was the great and mysterious Nostradamus, and the prophecy runs : — That when Good Friday falls on St. George's Day, Easter on St. Marks Day, and Corpus "Chiisti on St. John's Day, the end of the world will be at hand. In 188(5 the three celebrations in question are timed to take place on the days named, and the only conclusion is that the sanio year will witness the end of all things connected with this planet. It is a solemn thought. Without going back to prophecies of similar import, which alarmed the world in the eighteenth century, it will be remembered that only five years ago the fears of many

were aroused by the approach of the time for the fulfilment of Mother Shipton's last prediction— Mother Shipton who had foretold the death of Cardinal Wolsey and the erection of the Crystal Palace — And lastly the end of the -world shall come In eighteen hundred and eighty-one. But the end of the world came not in 1881. The consequent relief of the niind was, however, of short duration, for the believers in the Deborah of King Henry VIII. asserted that she was too much of a poetess to have rhymed "one" with "come," and that the true reading was :

At last the end of the work shall be

In eighteen hundred and eighty-three. Yet that year, too, passed without any appreciable alteration in the earth's rotundity. Perhaps the believers are still discovering glosses on the original text, which really runs :

AH mortal men will cross the Styx In eighteen hundred and eighty-six.

The world will go en masse to heaven In eighteen hundred and eighty-seven Or, again —

All living things will meet with fate In eighteen hundred and eighty-eight.

But this is the utmost license that can be allowed them, and

They'll really have to draw the line In eighteen hundred and eighty-nine.

Happily, however, there is a possibility that the world and the prophecies may yet live long together. In the year of grace 1872 Easter fell as it falls in 1886 ; and Good Friday and Corpus Christi were also in consequence coincident with the Feasts of Saint Georee and John the Baptist. There may have~been some special reason why fate was averted in that year ; it certainly was, and there is a grain of consolation in the hope that what has happened once may happen again. We must pray for the best, and comfort ourselves with the thought that, if the worst comes, at anyrate the Cabinet will avoid difficulties in the latter half of the year. Why will not the prophets tell us who will compose that Cabinet ?

Illustrating the Liquor Question.

Two coloured barbers, one an old man and the other a young man. The young one took off his apron and started out of the door. " Yo's gwan to get a drink, Jim ?" asked the elder.

" Dats what I'se gwan to do."'

"Go and git yo' drink. I yoost to do de same ting when I wuz young. When I was fust married dah wuz a gin mill next door to de shop wha' I wucked, an' I spent in it fifty and sebenty cents a day outen de dollar an' a half I earned. Well, one mawnin' I went into de bntchah shop, an who should come in but de man what kept de likker shop.

" ' Gib me ten pounds po'ter-house steak,' he said.

"He got it and went out. 1 sneaked up to de butchah and looked to see what money I had lef. " ' What do you want ?' said the butchah. " ' Gib me ten cents wuf of libber,' wuz my remark.

"It win; all I could pay fur. Now you go an' git yo* drink. You'll eat libber, but de man wat sells yo' de stuff will liab his po'torhouse steak. De man behind de bar eats po'ter-house — de man in de front eats libber. I ain't teched de stuff in thirty years, an' I am eatin' po'ter-house myself." — Buffalo Express.